The number of congressional sponsors of legislation requiring deposits on beer and soft drink containers increased during the year, but there was still insufficient support to bring the issue to a vote. The states continued to be the major initiators of legislation to discourage the use of throwaway cans and bottles.
Three states now have deposit legislation—Oregon's went into effect in 1972, Vermont's in 1973, and South Dakota's will take effect on July 1, 1976. In 1975 there were major legislative battles in Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wisconsin. There will be legislative debates in 1976 in California and Michigan, and again in Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, and New York.
In the early 1970s deposit legislation was regarded primarily as a litter control device. The Oregon legislature passed the first state law to require deposits on beverage containers after noting that (1) the shift from returnable containers to throwaway containers, which began in 1960 would be virtually completed by 1980, and (2) beverage containers accounted for more than half of the volume of roadside litter. As a control device, the measure was successful: beverage container litter fell by two-thirds.
Since that time the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found additional reasons to favor deposit legislation. The EPA figures published in a mid-July report indicate that once adjustments are made, a shift back to refillable bottles would save two-thirds of the energy consumed in providing the same quantity of beer and soft drinks in throwaway containers. National deposit legislation, according to this report, could save energy equivalent to about a third of the fuel consumed by farm equipment. In addition, refillable bottles would save several million tons of raw materials, mostly glass, steel, and aluminum.
Of particular interest to the economist is the EPA's calculation that the capital, labor, and energy costs of the total system—container production, distribution, possible rewashing and refilling, possible collection and disposal—are about 10 percent lower for the refillable container than for the throwaway. For a total of 60 billion fillings, the estimated saving would be $2 or $3 billion. These figures suggest that the private market may have been making the wrong decision in switching to throwaways because it did not include all of the costs. In the private market, the costs of disposal and collection are ignored in the throwaway system, while the costs of inconvenience of return are taken into account, though not in the shelf price. For the correct social choice the disposal costs should be included, as they are in the EPA's calculations.
Until the beginning of this year the EPA favored both national and state legislation requiring deposits on returnable containers. Much of the beverage industry and the United Steelworkers of America have opposed it. The industry maintained that the convenience of the throwaway was too valuable for the consumer to give it up and that containers can be recovered more effectively from the solid waste stream than through their return to the store. Both the industry and the union also argued that a switch back to returnables would reduce employment, despite EPA figures showing an increase.
At the beginning of 1975 the EPA backed off somewhat. It became neutral with respect to the issue of deposit legislation at the state level, and it shifted its attention from national legislation, which it still favors, to issuing guidelines which would require federal agencies to use returnable containers. Earlier the EPA had tried to lessen industry and labor objections by proposing that a deposit system be phased in slowly in order to minimize the unemployment impacts and to ease the capital adjustment as well.
All in all, it appears that little will happen on the federal level until a deposit system has proved itself in an industrial state or until some scheme to alleviate the problem of displaced labor is worked out. Meanwhile, several other countries have become interested in deposit legislation. The Organization for European Cooperation and Development is undertaking a study of the beverage container issue, including an analysis of experience in the United States and other countries. Currently, three prov-inces in Canada have such legislation, as do Norway and Sweden.
The beverage container controversy, the most visible and bitterly fought solid waste issue, illustrates some but not all of the current issues related to solid waste management. Some of the others are identified below.
Source reduction versus waste management. For many years solid waste management has been identified with techniques for collecting and processing waste that has been generated. This approach has been increasingly criticized as too narrow—because it neglects opportunities to reduce waste through the design and use of products. A systematic view, the argument goes, would include reduction at the source as well as processing at the end. Increased attention was focused on this alternative during the year.
Elimination versus extension of subsidy. At one time the 1975 energy bill included an investment tax credit for the purchase of scrap materials. This credit had its genesis in an effort to "equalize" competition between scrap and virgin materials, which hitherto enjoyed the advantage of the depletion allowance, and it was to be an incentive for waste treatment through materials recovery. However, the amendment was defeated because it would have increased energy consumption and materials throughput in the economy as a whole. In other words, compared with elimination of, depletion allowances, the extension of them through "equalization" would have increased the source of solid waste among other things.
Regulatory versus "economic" incentives. Although there is no comprehensive legislation on solid waste, the approach taken by congressional committees and the EPA so far has paralleled the regulatory approach embodied in air and water pollution acts. In draft legislation the administrator has been required to specify proper packaging, and so on.
Perhaps in response to the emerging antiregulatory climate, the EPA is presently considering a broader economic approach to solid waste. In this scheme, paper and other materials destined for municipal solid waste would be taxed in proportion to their disposal costs. There would be a tax offset for material recovered from the solid waste stream, and the revenue collected would be returned to the municipalities for waste processing. This approach, if taken, would be an experiment in effluent taxation and would be of interest for air and water pollution programs. A mixture of source and treatment strategies, this approach would be designed to have nationwide application.
A version of this article appeared in print in the Winter 1976 issue of Resources magazine.
